Maria Gutmann

Maria Adele Gutmann , also Maria Guttmann , Maria Hershman , Maria Horch , (born June 11, 1889 in Graz , Austria ; † February 19, 1963 in Zurich , Switzerland ) was an Austrian stage actress , director , dramaturge and theater manager , one of the few theater makers in the German-speaking area of ​​the interwar period.

Life

The early years in Austria

Maria Adele Gutmann began her theater career in 1908 as an actress in her native Graz. She experienced her artistically most important years in the interwar period at the Deutsches Volkstheater and the Raimundtheater in her hometown Vienna. Her first demonstrable engagement at the Deutsches Volkstheater took place in June 1922 at the side of Alexander Moissis in Leo Tolstoy's The Living Corpse . In the following years she was, among other things, partner of Albert Bassermann in König Lear and Emil Jannings ' in Fuhrmann Henschel , but also worked in contemporary plays such as in Christa Winsloe's drama Yesterday and Today , where she, as strict, unyielding, praised discipline and order as the highest principles Director of a Prussian girls' college shone.

Maria Gutmann was one of the few women who was also allowed to direct at the time. She made her debut in this subject in 1929 with the socially critical play Revolte im Erziehungshaus . In the 1932/33 season she also appeared as director of the fairy tale performances at the Deutsches Volkstheater and directed Erich Kästner's Emil and the Detectives , among others . Maria Gutmann remained active at the Deutsches Volkstheater until November 1935 and until then had appeared in 28 plays. The artist, who belongs to the political left, was also involved in the Social Democratic Art Agency of Vienna, which in turn supported the studio stage she directed - The Young Stage . With this venue, Maria Gutmann wanted to set up socially relevant, socially committed theater (plays such as Bertolt Brecht's Die Mutter and Die Sailors von Cattaro ) for a workforce that had previously stayed away from the traditional cultural scene. The studio stage was also considered a talent factory for young up-and-coming artists. Most recently, in the 1937/38 season, the artist was employed in the dramaturgical office of the theater in der Josefstadt.

In exile in America

The annexation of Austria in March 1938 prompted Maria Gutmann to emigrate immediately. She found a temporary exile in France, where she can be traced back to November 1938 as an employee of the Radio Cité in Paris. The construction announced that Maria Gutmann had arrived in Cuba at the end of 1940 with the intention of going to Hollywood . In fact, she settled in New York . There she called herself Maria Hershman and from then on directed the Young People's Theater, a theater workshop. In autumn 1945 she married the author Franz Horch there . The couple ran the literary agency established by Horch and looked after world-class authors such as Franz Werfel , Thomas Mann and Upton Sinclair . On April 8, 1946, Maria Horch received US citizenship. In 1948 she returned home to Europe for the first time. After Horch's death, she kept traveling back to Europe.

Maria Gutmann / Horch, who in later years (also in official documents) repeatedly made herself eleven years younger, died in February 1963 of a stroke in the Hirslanden Clinic in Zurich.

Web links

• John Warren: Maria Gutmann Biography in Compass Austrian Theater Edition

literature

• Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 45.

Remarks

1. ↑ Life data according to the theater archive Kay Less
2. ^ Edition of January 3, 1941, p. 12
3. ↑ Construction report from October 5, 1945, p. 8
4. ↑ Dr. Franz Jakob Horch (Vienna 1901 - New York 1951) worked as an author and from 1926 to 1931 was dramaturge at the Berlin and Vienna theaters of the German Theater and Theater in the Josefstadt , headed by Max Reinhardt . After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, he fled to Switzerland ( Zurich ). From November 1938 he lived in New York
5. ^ Return from Cherbourg in July 1948
6. ↑ Flights Paris - New York City 1952, 1953 and 1956 and flights London - New York 1954 and 1956 are documented
7. ↑ According to the death certificate of the American Consulate General in Zurich, a copy of the document is in the theater archive for less